Chamber and committees

That appears to have concluded questions from the committee. Are there any further points that you would like to make before we conclude the session?

An important part of reform is digitalisation. It is clear that there has to be co-operation between the Scottish Government and local government, so I am a wee bit concerned about some of the comments on that in your submission.

For example, in paragraph 43, you talk about the myjobscotland portal, which you say is managed by COSLA and

“has streamlined the recruitment process for councils and other public sector bodies (although the Scottish Government and its agencies have opted not to use it)”.

In paragraph 70, you say that, in the digital strategy,

“both COSLA and the Scottish Government committed to develop and expand DigitalBoost as ‘our primary programme of support for SMEs’.”

You go on to say that

“Despite this, the programme saw its budget reduced by 25% for 2022/23 and indications are that it is unlikely to be funded in 2023/24.”

Clearly, the collaboration is not working as well as it should. Why is the Scottish Government not using myjobscotland and why is the digital strategy support for SMEs not being continued?

I do not want to talk only about budgetary stuff, because our inquiry is more about reform, but that is at the core of a lot of what you have been saying, so I will ask one or two questions on that before I bring Sarah Watters in.

The figures that you mentioned are from paragraph 46 of your submission, in which you talk about

“an increase of 4.3% in Scottish Government funding of other areas over the same period”,

but would that be the case if you were to take out the funding for the national health service, for example? The difficulty has been that we have an ageing and more frail population. We could argue about the percentages here and there, but any Government of any colour would have put a disproportionate amount of additional funding, when it was available, into the NHS because of it being demand led. An example of that is the fact that, pre-pandemic, there was a 25 per cent increase in accident and emergency cases over five years. There has been a 50 per cent increase in radiographers and a doubling of the number of psychiatrists in the NHS, but that is still not enough.

Is that not the context in which we operate? You responded in such a way as to suggest that we are all heading in the same direction at the same pace, but there are some areas of the Scottish Government where the pressures are absolutely in your face. You can argue about priorities—it is crucial that we do that—but is that not the background picture, in a period in which, overall, we have had a fairly flat funding settlement over a number of years?

I will ask you about those kinds of issues as we move on. It is interesting that you keep saying “since 2008”, but as I recall, the previous Administration had a policy of top slicing 3 per cent of local government funding year in, year out. That would have been its policy, so we would have been in this situation regardless of which Administration we had had.

I have a question for Sarah Watters—fair funding sounds good, but how much is fair funding? That is the issue. Given that local government is as aware as the rest of us of the financial pressures that the Scottish Government and indeed the United Kingdom Government are under, how realistic is it to expect additional funding for local government over and above any average increase in the settlement that may come to the Scottish Government over the next year?

I have one final question regarding the fact that local authorities were not asked by the Scottish Government to submit reform plans to inform the 2024-25 Scottish budget. How do you feel about that?

That is a point well made.

I know that Sarah Watters wanted to come in, but I am trying to move on because I want colleagues to come in. I could spend the whole evidence session asking questions, because there is so much really good detail, but I will just ask one more question about best practice.

What is good about the document is that there are tremendous examples of good practice—for example, Renfrewshire Council’s tackling poverty commission, North Ayrshire Council’s skills for life programme and East Dunbartonshire Council’s snack and play programme. You also give the example of North Ayrshire Council’s community wealth building programme, which is expanding throughout Scotland.

I have asked over many years on a number of committees how such good practice can be spread throughout local government, because a concern that I have always had is that council X might have a great project and council Y might have another brilliant project, but there is not as much sharing and cross-cutting as there should be to ensure that those projects are implemented more widely.

I thank the committee for my appointment, and I thank in particular my colleagues Michael Marra and John Mason, who have convened the committee’s meetings in my absence.

As I rejoin the committee, I declare that I have no relevant interests.

Under our next agenda item, the committee will continue our inquiry into the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme. Today, we will hear from Sarah Watters, who is director of membership and resources at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and Cleland Sneddon, the chief executive of South Lanarkshire Council, who is representing the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers Scotland. I welcome both of you to the meeting.

I intend to allow up to 75 minutes for this session. If the witnesses would like to be brought into the discussion at any point, they should indicate that to the clerks, please, and I will call them. We will move straight to questions.

I was impressed by the quality and detail of your joint submission, which is an excellent piece of work. There was one very clear and overriding statement from local government. Paragraph 9 in the summary of key points states:

“Local Government requires fair and sustainable funding and greater empowerment.”

Such themes run right through the document. However, something that I have found frustrating with COSLA on a number of occasions is the fact that, although there is talk of fair and sustainable funding—I think that everyone on the committee is very sympathetic to that; for example, three members of the committee who are here today are former councillors, and Douglas Lumsden was, of course, a council leader—there is no detail on what that really means. It would be good if that could be expanded on a wee bit. We will touch on that and then go on to other points.

The medium-term financial strategy states:

“it is for individual public bodies ... to determine the target operating model for their workforces and to ensure workforce plans and projections are affordable in 2023-24 and over the medium term”

Do you consider that to be realistic at this time?

Yes, I think that that is a positive development. I certainly hope that it will prove to be so.

One of the things that the Scottish Government has been doing is increasing benefits relative to south of the border, such that, by about 2028, the figure will be about £1.4 billion. I have spoken to people in local government who have told me that some of that money would be better spent on the local government services that help to underpin work to reduce poverty.

Has local government in Scotland undertaken any cost benefit analysis to look at the benefit of a pound being spent in local government, for example, compared with its being spent on one of the measures in relation to benefits or, indeed, any other measure in the Scottish Government’s spend, so that we can be clear about the value for money aspect of the work that local government does?